Former First Families Pay Respects to Lady Bird Johnson

AUSTIN, Tex., July 14 — Past the images of escalating chaos in Vietnam, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the triumph of mankind’s entry into space, at the top of a marble staircase at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum here, thousands of mourners filed past the coffin of Lady Bird Johnson.

Mrs. Johnson died Wednesday at 94, and at her funeral Saturday afternoon at the Riverbend Centre church, representatives of first families stretching back half a century to the Eisenhower administration came to pay their condolences.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hopes to be the first person to have served as first lady and president, sat next to her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

To Mr. Clinton’s right was Laura Bush, who like Mrs. Johnson provided comfort and support as first lady to another president from Texas leading America in an unpopular war. Former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, sat on Mrs. Bush’s other side.